DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
Thanks to an improving national economy and careful portfolio management, the State Retirement and Pension System blew past its estimates and gained $6 billion in fiscal 2011, a 20% rate of return.
The performance was nearly three times the benchmark rate of return of 7.75%, set by the system’s board of trustees.
Retirement and Pension System spokesman Michael Golden said that the system’s success is through much of its diversification.
“It’s a combination of excellent management provided by our investment division and the turnabout of the economy,” he said.
The system made most of its money through private equity investments, which make up 47% of the entire portfolio, and had a rate of return of nearly 39%. Private equity and real estate also posted high rates of return – 24% for private equity, and 23% for real estate – but the system had invested substantially less in those areas.
There is no estimate of how this helps the pension system’s long-term unfunded liability because investment income is amortized over several years. However, Golden said, coupled with the legislative changes to contributions and future annuities that passed the General Assembly this year, it should make a significant difference. The most recent figures indicate that the pension system has funding for 64% of the pensions it has promised.
GEORGETOWN, DE — A former taxi driver convicted of murdering a 78-year-old Lewes woman was sentenced July 22 to death by lethal injection in Sussex County Superior Courthouse.
Leslie Small, 53, stood calm and silent as Judge Richard F. Stokes handed down a sentence that included capital punishment for two counts of first-degree murder and life imprisonment for five other criminal charges. “There will be no more victims for Leslie Small,” Stokes said.
On April 5, a Sussex County jury unanimously found Small guilty of murdering June McCarson in her Lewes home. On April 14, the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty for Small.
About 10 people listened in the gallery as Stokes recalled the events of Nov. 11, 2009. Small had been a cabdriver for Comfort Ride Express, a Lewes-area cab company; McCarson had been one of his regular customers.
CHESTERTOWN - Washington College is on track to take over the Sgt. John H. Newnam Armory.
The armory, built in the early 1930s, was declared surplus in 2005, and its fate was debated intensely for several months until the town decided to take control of the property. Monday's town council meeting showed that not all the fire has gone out of the debate.
Mayor Margo Bailey said the college's properties have been "beautifully and successfully" developed, and she expected the same to be true of the armory, sited on a 3.5-acre waterfront lot on Cross Street extended/Quaker Neck Road.
She said the college agreed to cover all costs of the transfer, including environmental studies the town paid for when it began considering buying the property. The college also would pay off about $500,000 of remaining debt for repairs to the building the Army made in the 1990s.
Bailey said concerns over the college's tax-free status are misplaced.
Could This Be The End of
Rupert Murdoch and FOXNews?
The liberal activist group MoveOn.org says it is launching a campaign “to build unavoidable public pressure for full investigations” into Rupert Murdoch’s U.S. news outlets – including Fox News, a favorite target of liberals.
“Could this be the end of Rupert Murdoch and Fox News?” the group asked in a July 21 email message to supporters.
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According to MoveOn.org, “the key is to find out how far Fox and rest of Murdoch’s news outlets went here in the U.S. If they’ve been as corrupt and criminal here as it looks like they’ve been in the U.K., then we might just see Murdoch’s media empire crumble.”
Murdoch and his media empire have come under fire in Britain, following reports that employees at Murdoch’s News Corporation hacked into the phone of a 13-year-old murder victim and bribed police and government officials for information leading to tabloid scoops.
President Barack Obama will likely lose his re-election bid without a high turnout in African-American communities, but that turnout is being threatened by the economic pain suffered in urban communities during Obama’s administration.
This critical issue helps explain Obama’s meeting Thursday with two leading organizers in the African-American community, Marc Morial of the National Urban League and Benjamin Jealous of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
It “remains to be seen” if African-American voter turnout will be reduced by the sour economy, Jealous said in an interview outside the White House. But he added: “What we learned from 2010 is when you stay home, you lose.”
The president listened to several job-creation proposals and will focus on jobs once the debt-ceiling debate is wrapped up, said Morial. The country faces a “great crisis in jobs … [and] we remain committed to a strong relationship with the president and his administration,” said Morial, who declined to discuss the economy’s impact on Election Day turnout.
I thought that Obama and Biden had been concentrating on jobs since January of 2009???? – Ed.
Around four in ten Delaware public school students failed to meet new state proficiency standards in both reading and math during the 2010-11 school year, according to results from an overhauled testing system, released on Thursday.
In science, fewer than half the students met higher standards set by the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System (DCAS), while around 60 percent made the grade in social studies.
Proficiency levels from the first full year of DCAS testing had been expected to drop sharply from those recorded by the old Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) which set lower standards.
But officials said the score decline was not as great as predicted.
“The previous standards may have indicated a higher percentage of students meeting expectations but that was because the bar was lower,” the state Department of Education said in a statement.
“The new expectations better measure how children need to be prepared to succeed when competing with students around the nation and around the world,” the department said.
To see the full results of the 2011 Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System (DCAS) tests click here
Look at you! You're practically leaking money from your pockets, spending all that dough on name-brand medications, paper towels and toothbrushes. Check out a few common household items you could be paying too much for and stop that cash leakage.
Forbes.com knows where we're hitting our pockets the hardest, and highlights a few items consumers could either cut back on or find a cheaper alternative for, in order to save some big bucks.
Name-brand medications: The recipes for aspirin and other pain relievers like acetaminophen and ibuprofen are pretty basic, and buying a name brand version can be up to 40% more than generic. That's just silly. Compare labels and active ingredients when making your choice of over-the-counter meds.
Buy refills for replaceable products: Is your liquid soap out? Don't buy a whole new bottle and pay for that packaging — grab a big refill of your favorite detergents, soaps and cleaners and fill the dispenser back up.
CHESTERTOWN - The town has begun negotiations to purchase the Chestertown Marina.
At a closed session of the Mayor and Council June 20, the council voted 4-1 to make an offer for the marina and two connected pieces of property, all of which are owned by Roy Kirby, Jr. In addition to the marina, the offer includes the adjacent parking lot and a strip of land on the south side of Front Street, between Cannon Street and Wilmer Park.
The Fish Whistle restaurant, which Kirby also owns, is not included in the property the town is offering to buy.
The town's non-binding letter of intent, dated June 22, makes an initial offer of $2,070,000. The offer matches the property's appraised value as determined by the Greenlee Group, an Easton real estate appraisal firm specializing in waterfront property.
This is an UPDATE from Wednesday’s post.
ST. MICHAELS - Clifton Levante Morton, 36, of St. Michaels, who is wanted for first-degree assault, remains at-large after he allegedly shot another man in the leg Monday night in St. Michaels.
Morton, of 111 Mitchell St., is wanted on charges of first- and second-degree assault, possession of a handgun and reckless endangerment. Morton is black, 5 feet, 11 inches tall, 215 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.
According to St. Michaels police, officers responded at 10:15 p.m. to Morton's home for a reported shooting. Upon arrival, police said a man identified as Christopher Carroll allegedly hit Antwan Johnson in the face. During the fight, police allege Johnson was shot in the leg by Morton and Morton left the home on foot.
http://sbynews.blogspot.com/2011/07/police-search-for-shooter.html
For almost 200 years, occupancy of these stately homes - shaded by live oak trees, with sweeping views of the Chesapeake Bay - has been limited to an august circle of Army brass and their families.
You needed at least a couple of stars on your Army uniform and a prestigious assignment to Fort Monroe to live on what's known as Generals' Row.
Not anymore. With the Army about to pull up stakes and move to Fort Eustis in Newport News, scores of homes previously occupied by soldiers and their families are now available to the public.
"We've got great product available, and we're open for business," Jerry Moore, real estate director for the Fort Monroe Authority, said Thursday after a board meeting.
The authority, which will manage the 570-acre property when the Army departs in September, has been leasing more than 100 of the fort's 272 residential units to military members and civilian defense workers. The bulk of them are in crumbling buildings from the 1950s.
As of Aug. 1, the coveted residences inside the stone fort, on Generals' Row and in a Victorian-era village are available for lease to the general public. Most of them are brick, some date to the 1830s, and one was occupied by Robert E. Lee as a young Army officer.
Rents will range from $1,350 to $4,500 a month, plus utilities.
DENTON - The news most everyone in Caroline County has been waiting for has finally been confirmed. Wal-Mart is coming to Denton!
The mega-merchandiser made it official, issuing a press release earlier this week that groundbreaking will begin on a Supercenter during the week of Sept. 19.
"Wal-Mart is excited to begin the construction of this Supercenter site in an effort to bring greater development to Caroline County, offer quality jobs with good benefits and a variety of goods at our everyday low prices to those in the community," said Mary Wilson, Maryland Market manager of Wal-Mart, in a press release. "We look forward to partnering with elected officials, community leaders and surrounding businesses to help address the needs of the local community."
The Supercenter is set to open next summer at 610 Legion Road, Denton, near state Route 404.
A year after the enactment of a sweeping Wall Street reform law, evidence is growing that it failed in its main mission of ending taxpayer bailouts of global banks considered “too big to fail.”
Despite an outright ban on bailouts written into the legislation, Wall Street investors and credit agencies remain skeptical that the government will not step in again to prevent any downfall of major banks such as Bank of America, Citigroup or JP Morgan. Those financial goliaths have only grown in size and power, making it more certain that they would bring down much of the financial system with them.
The most concrete sign that the banks still enjoy an implicit guarantee from the government is that none of the top banks has been downgraded since the legislation was enacted, even though their high credit ratings for years have been based on the expectation that the government would prevent any catastrophic failure of the bank that would harm the bank’s creditors.
Standard & Poor’s Corp. last week pointedly disputed the often-stated claim on Capitol Hill that the legislation had put an end to “too big to fail” and the era of federal bailouts.
Tradition continues to fall here on DelMarVa. One more symptom of the cultural decline of our great nation. It appears that Rock Hall will be joining Salisbury and Sussex County in jettisoning the Lord’s Prayer from its council meetings:
Thursday night, Mayor Bob Willis announced as the meeting started that the recitation might be the last: "We need to give this a good hard look, see what our options are, and where we want to go with this, with opening up the town meeting with the Lord's Prayer."
Town resident Gren Whitman contacted Willis by letter June 10, asking the council to pick an alternative to the Lord's Prayer, which he said is specifically denominational.
If prayers at government meetings endorse one religious group, they are unconstitutional.
At the beginning of the meeting, Whitman joined everyone in the Pledge of Allegiance, and sat down during the prayer.
There is a big difference between Rock Hall, Sussex County and Salisbury. In Rock Hall’s case, Whitman was man enough to stand up and object. In Sussex County they were threatened with a lawsuit. In Salisbury, our city council, sans councilwomen Debbie Campbell and Shanie Shields, thought that somebody MIGHT be offended.
Sussex should have waited UNTIL a law suit was actually filed. Salisbury should have not done anything. While we commend Mr. Whitman for his gumption, Rock Hall should also stand firm; at least until (or IF) a lawsuit is filed.
For all of you naysayers out there – I can’t wait until the Pledge of Allegiance goes as well. One more tradition gone. One more step down the ladder of cultural decline.
A jury on Wednesday found a Lufkin man guilty of resisting arrest in his home after police mistook him for a burglar. A judge then sentenced the man to serve 30 days in jail and pay a $500 fine.
Marco Sauceda, 30, entered Angelina County Court-at-Law No. 2 Judge Derek Flournoy’s courtroom Wednesday morning wearing a tan button-down shirt and navy dress slacks, but by the end of the day found himself in county orange.
Following a one-day trial and four-hour deliberation, a six-person Angelina County jury concluded Sauceda was guilty of resisting arrest on March 15, 2009, while being pepper-sprayed, shot with a pepper ball gun and wrestled to the ground by Lufkin Police officers in his living room, according to testimony.
I wonder if President Obama will invite Mr. Sauceda and the police who arrested him to another BEER SUMMIT?
by L. Brent Bozell, III
Laura Ingraham calls her newest book, "Of Thee I Zing," a “comedic intervention” on the sorry state of our popular culture. It begins with a declaration of independence from the moral soup in which we swim: “When in a coarse state of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bonds between themselves and the cultural blight degrading the Republic...they should declare the causes that impel their separation.”
Ingraham's willingness to mix it up on the culture is refreshing and was apparent during her book interview on NBC's “Today,” where she underlined to Matt Lauer that Today's "own" Summer Concert Series included vile artists like woman-battering singer Chris Brown and F-bomb-dropping “artists” Enrique Iglesias and Cee-Lo.
How big are these cultural icons? Ingraham and her collaborator on the book, Catholic TV journalist Raymond Arroyo, were amazed at what they thought must be the new homelessness on the streets of New York, but then realized people were camping out two nights early to acquire a choice spot to witness Chris Brown perform on NBC.
Brown is vile. His "music" includes usage of all the mandatory filthy language along with the N word, which vile "musicians" like Brown can use with impunity. There is also the perfunctory misogyny in some of his top songs like “Look at Me Now.” Here’s a little sampler, which requires a lot of bleeping: “Lil n---a bigger than gorilla / ‘Cause I’m killing every n---a that try to be on my s--- / Better cuff your chick if you with her, I can get her / And she accidentally slip and fall on my d--k.”
One of the nation’s most prominent Christian ministries has decided to take Christ out of its name – a move that has generated cries of political correctness from within the evangelical community.
Campus Crusade for Christ International announced this week that it will change the name of its U.S. Operations to “Cru” in early 2012.
“We felt like our name was getting in the way of accomplishing our mission,” said Steve Sellers, the vice president for Campus Crusade, noting that the ministry will still be committed to “proclaiming Christ around the world.”
Sellers said researchers found that 9 percent of Christians and 20 percent of non-Christians were alienated by the name Campus Crusade for Christ.
The organization was founded in 1951 by Bill and Vonette Bright and today has 25,000 staff members serving in 191 countries. Bright died in 2003, but his widow offered support for the name change in a video posted online.
“When Bill Bright started the organization, he told his wife that someday they would have to change the name,” Sellers said. “As early as the late '70s and '80s he was looking at making the name change.”
Sellers said several factors were involved in the name change – including overseas sensitivities.
“Our name was becoming more and more of a hindrance,” he told Fox News Radio. He specifically mentioned the word crusade.
“It’s reverted back to some of its meaning related to the Middle Ages – forcing Christianity on different parts of the world,” he said.
As for removing Christ from their name, the Campus Crusade for Christ website states:
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney still leads the race for the Republican nomination -- but just barely, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. 
Close behind Romney is undeclared candidate Texas Governor Rick Perry at 14 percent. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann comes in at 10 percent -- up from 4 percent in early June.South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a favorite of Tea Party-leaning Republicans, is urging wary Senate Democrats to seriously consider supporting the House-approved Cut, Cap, Balance Act as a conclusion to the nation’s debt ceiling debate.
“I hope that Senate Democrats will realize — if they want to solve this problem before Aug. 2, there’s only one plan on the table that will do that,” DeMint said in an interview with The DC’s Ginni Thomas. “If they vote it down, we’re out of time.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, has scheduled a “motion to table” vote on Friday for the Cut, Cap, Balance Act. If 51 senators vote for the motion, the bill will be scrapped — something Reid clearly wants. DeMint warns strongly against choosing that course.
“The president gives us a lot of words,” DeMint said. ”But there’s not one proposal from the president, there’s not one proposal from Democrats, and Republicans have unfortunately been over here negotiating with ourselves.”
“But now we have a position,” DeMint added, “and I hope Republicans will stick with it.”
by Michelle Malkin
Dodd-Frank, the 2,300-page financial "reform" monstrosity spearheaded by Capitol Hill corruptocrats, turned 1 this week. It made too-big banks bigger. It made too-risky incentives riskier. It made a lousy economy lousier.
Billed as a "consumer protection" act, Dodd-Frank has succeeded phenomenally -- in protecting and stimulating the business-stifling business of government.
Dodd-Frank is a tyrannical triumph of rule-makers, lobbyists and other non-elected spongers over taxpayers. If you don't want an unseemly glimpse into the self-serving, sausage-making process that feeds the insatiable Beltway industry, read no further. The law's implementation process is so far-reaching and Byzantine that every member of Congress should be suffering migraines from it.
